My Homemade Soaker, on steroids.

Homemade water gun threads that are notable.
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Dusty
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Joined: Wed Sep 05, 2007 5:17 pm

My Homemade Soaker, on steroids.

Post by Dusty » Wed Sep 05, 2007 5:47 pm

Greets all! First post!

I thought I'd finally share my creation with the world. I built this over 4 years ago before any super soaker forums even existed (I looked then, couldn't find anything). Since then it has long gone into retirement, but a recent squirtgun activity brought it out of hiding and I finally got some footage of it.

Video Below

Where my idea came from:
I was having good clean fun with some friends and our super soakers. Soon we began modifying and, eventually building our own super soakers and water balloon launchers. I owned the infamous 'Super Soaker Monster XL', but I had some issues with it and it was time for me to step up to the plate and join the homemade party.

Here were my issues with the XL:
#1 It was heavy - really heavy. All of that uncompressed water held in one arm made you weary fast.
#2 pumping - god you had to pump it so much!

Then I discovered when using the 'quickfill' that not only did it refill the resevoir, but it also used the pressurized city water to re-pressuriz the MonsterXL's water bladder. As a result, I would always run to the quickfill to repressurize my water bladder, then just stop when it would finish filling the bladder and start to fill the resevoir. Leaving the resevoir empty greatly reduced the weight, and I never had to pump again! Hence my idea was born... to improve upon those strengths and remove the weaknesses.

So this is what I wanted in a homemade:
  • No pumping
  • No electricity, batteries, or electircal air compressor needed to pressurize anything.
  • No excessive weight on my arms - I wanted the water storage on my back.
  • More Water! I wanted to shoot normal streams of water longer, and I wanted an option to let it all go in one, even LARGER big kahuna blast. What I ended up with was about 3 gallons of big kahuna blast ^^.
After about 4 or 5 versions, I reveal to you my results:

Image
Fresh out of the storage closet and cleaned up with a rag.

Image
Me at my friends house testing it before a squirtgun party; my apt doesnt have hoses!

At the heart:
Two, steel, 2-gallon water bladder tanks. These are the same tanks well water pumps use to temporarily store pressurized air and water so they don't have to kick on and off constantly; the same tanks people use to water their lawns and gardens -- only smaller. These little tanks are used as booster kits for under sinks and the like. I got them at a local well water and irrigation supply co. Inside is a rubber bladder that fills and stores the water, and outside the bladder (and inside the steel casing) is pre-pressuriized air at about 25psi that is constant. This ensures that city water at greater than 25psi will flow in, but as the tanks empty you will never completely lose pressure -- at the very end of your water supply you will still have 25+psi...

Essentially they will initally output whatever the pressure your available water hose is. I've had it pressurize up to 65psi in the city and with the current version, no leaks or hose swelling.

Why two tanks? simple - twice the throughput. Each tank is designed to maintain the water throughput of a typical hose. So two tanks double that throughput. This makes for the perfect 'big kahuna' blast. Their 3/4 pipe fittings are sweated together and meld into a 1 1/2 hose fitting, which at no point narrows from where they meet... all the way to the opening of the barrel. (although this last version in the video accidently used too small of a ball valve and pinched that 1 1/2 throughput a bit; the gun needed some fixing, and I forgot which parts to use it had been so long...).

Keep in mind 4 gallons is your water and your air, so you end up with give~or~take 3 gallons of water.

Surprisingly the weight is very easy to carry snug on the lower back, and I sprint with it all the time.

I later lowered the pressure in one tank slightly (2.5 psi) so when using the big kahuna blast, when one tank bottomed out the other tank still had some water left in it. This allowed me to get off another 5-10 normal blasts while returning to the refill station, so i would not be without ammo after using the main cannon.

Nozzles
Their are two nozzles on the gun, and very simple.
One is a garden hose. Wide open the gun will maintain the full output of the garden hose nozzle for 33 seconds (essentially you have a mobile garden hose...), and firing in quick bursts lasts you a loooong time. I've tested other head units with other nozzles, but nothing quite matched the overall distance, soakage, and ease of use of the good ol garden hose nozzle. Although having 15mins of streaming water out of a tiny nozzle was somewhat humorous, it was impracticle.

The other is a large ball valve. Open it up, and it will dump 3 gallons of water in about a second or two. A previous version used a larger ball valve and actually dumped faster with even more kick; actually causing you to brace yourself for a moment. The current version useses a smaller one by mistake - If I ever work on it again maybe I'll put it back one day. It's still plenty fast - check out the video.

Also on the gun has a PSI gauge to let you know when the gun is fully pressurized (takes about 20 seconds, and you can still shoot while its re-charging from the hose).

To top it off, at the bottom of the gun is a hose 'quick connect'. This will connect you to a hose with the quick connect in mere seconds - or is the perfect height to connect to the REFILL STATION... see below.

REFILL STATION (background of first pic above)
I got tired of ppl ignoring the rules and attacking me at the refill area which was supposed to be a no shooting zone. This was a later project that increased the madness. I didn't want to kneel down to pick up a hose at any given time and remain vulnerable. So... thus was born the refill station. The male quick connect on top of the refill station mates perfectly and at just the right height as the female quick connect on the bottom of the water blasters head unit. Cinderblock, concrete, pipe, and a fancy 'no kink garden hose' fitting. This allows instant connection to a water source. A 1/4 turn of the handle starts charging the gun. Meanwhile you can tilt the gun up, down, and rotate 360 degrees and fire endlessly while connected to the hose. Best of all it is pressurizing in the tanks all the while, and in addition to being in 'unlimited garden hose mode' you can even use the big kahuna blast every 20 seconds or so. No vulnerability...

VIDEO: http://www.ringo.com/videos/videos.html ... =221468355

This was just a spontanious video from my digital camera of me shooting a tree. I didn't have optimal pressure in the gun at the time either; perhaps one day I'll return with a better video.

My friends each built elaborate water guns themselves; very dissimilar to my own. Unfortunately they are all married now so getting them to dust theirs off to post about em' isnt going to be likely haha.

Glad to see these forums now, I afraid I havn't looked around so I hope I'm not too late to the party! Amazing other nutz out there get overly into this stuff like me haha! A forum would have saved me a lot of money in revisions back in the day. Hey sorry I didn't share earlier. Hope u all enjoy!
Last edited by Dusty on Mon Dec 10, 2007 1:03 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Silence
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Post by Silence » Wed Sep 05, 2007 10:26 pm

Welcome to the Super Soaker Central forums, Dusty! That's quite an impressive water gun, and a nice writeup too. Thanks. :)

You guys sound fairly serious about water wars and homemade weaponry...so it's good to see there are some good results :cool: . If you're looking for more range, though, you'll probably want a threaded adapter and endcaps so you can add a smaller nozzle to the ball valve opening.

The reservoirs do look a bit uncomfortable...but I'll take your word for it being usable. Good luck!

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SSCBen
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Post by SSCBen » Fri Sep 07, 2007 3:18 am

Very nice homemade water gun! That's very impressive. Seems the "water bladder" idea isn't so new after all (in reference to a thread a few months ago).

As for the lack of Super Soaker forums 4 years ago, you must realize that the community was in a sort of "restructuring" stage at that time. It was somewhat of the "dark age" of water gun websites. I'm not surprised at all that you couldn't find any forums. The most popular forum, Aquatica, had just recently collapsed in late 2002, leading to a few continuations and spin-offs of the Aquatica name. Super Soaker Central stated in March 2003 as SSCentral and we've been running nearly uninterrupted ever since.

Would you mind if we published this on our website? I'm always looking for great content to add and this is what I like. If so and you'd want to elaborate on any part, just post it. I could make what you've made here just from the picture and a few descriptions, but others need some help. ;)

I don't really have much more time to comment due to some work I must do (you probably understand).

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Drenchenator
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Post by Drenchenator » Tue Sep 11, 2007 5:30 pm

This gun appears very well-done and impressive. Good job. Do you know how far it can shoot?
The Drenchenator, also known as Lt. Col. Drench.

cobralex297
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Post by cobralex297 » Wed Sep 12, 2007 12:52 am

Looks very good, professionally made and such. It would be cool to see actual range and output statistics, as well as the results with different nozzles, which can be helpful.

A brilliant first attempt, a product with a level of quality that often takes much longer to create. Great job, I'd love to see more pictures of any modifications that you make to this already awesome blaster.
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sneakycookie
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Re: My Homemade Soaker, on steroids.

Post by sneakycookie » Sat May 10, 2008 4:38 pm

This reminds me of the flash flood.
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Drenchenator
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Re: My Homemade Soaker, on steroids.

Post by Drenchenator » Sat May 10, 2008 4:48 pm

This gun reminds me of anything except the Flash Flood. I still don't get why kids these days think the Flash Flood's or HydroBlitz's riot blast is all that--because it's just not. Statistically, it's only as good in output as the stream of my CPS 1200; and worst of all it doesn't get the range. This gun would perform ten times as well as a Flash Flood at least. And to top it all off, the Dusty's bladder tank idea was a genius way to get high capacity CPS easily, something that the Flash Flood definitely can't boast.
The Drenchenator, also known as Lt. Col. Drench.

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Chekist
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Re: My Homemade Soaker, on steroids.

Post by Chekist » Wed Sep 24, 2008 9:00 am

Dusty, can u reupload your video to youtube? U got old link :-(

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cantab
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Re: My Homemade Soaker, on steroids.

Post by cantab » Wed Sep 24, 2008 12:02 pm

Drenchenator wrote:This gun reminds me of anything except the Flash Flood.
Actually, I can see the resemblance. Both have a stream and a riot blast as separate nozzles with separate triggers. True, this gun's STREAM probably outdoes the FF's blast, but it is similar concept, different scales.
I work on Windows. My toolbox is Linux.
Arsenal:
Super Soaker: XP215, 2xXP220, Liquidator, Aquashock Secret Strike M(odded), Arctic Blast M, CPS1200, CPS2100, SC Power Pak, 3l aquapack, 1.5l aquapack
Water Warriors: Jet, Sting Ray M, Shark, Argon M, Tiger Shark, PulseMaster
Others: Waterbolt, The Blaster, Storm 500, Shield Blaster 2000, generic PR gun, generic backpack piston pumper (broken), 3l garden sprayer M, 10l water carrier:

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SSCBen
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Re: My Homemade Soaker, on steroids.

Post by SSCBen » Wed Sep 24, 2008 3:04 pm

Attached is a copy of his video that I saved.
Attachments

[The extension flv has been deactivated and can no longer be displayed.]


TheArbiter97
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Re: My Homemade Soaker, on steroids.

Post by TheArbiter97 » Wed Dec 09, 2009 4:33 am

And Embeded here is a vid XD
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Gud_N4jqI9A&hl ... ram><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Gud_N4jqI9A&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

Bradisfun
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Re: My Homemade Soaker, on steroids.

Post by Bradisfun » Thu Dec 24, 2009 4:06 am

that vid didn't work Arbiter

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mysterio
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Re: My Homemade Soaker, on steroids.

Post by mysterio » Fri Jul 16, 2010 12:24 am


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